I honestly, really do love Mondays.  The start of a fresh week, full of opportunity is always a good thing.  Mondays are when Chromewaves release their MP3 of the week, which is always an excellent cover song.  This week it’s Nick Cave covering Pulp’s ‘Disco 2000′.  There’s always a fresh New Yorker on Mondays (A previously unreleased piece of fiction from David Foster Wallace?  Yes, please!). Plus I always look forward to a brand new week of McSweeney’s, Slate, Beyond Robson, largehearted boy and the Monday edition of Very Short List in my Inbox, quickly followed by my weekly e-mail update from The Tyee.  Hell, if you roll that way, it’s even WWE Monday Night Raw tonight!  At Cherries And Clay we don’t judge, and certainly can’t blame you for wanting to start your week with steroid-infused pyrotechnics and smashing people over the head with steel chairs.

It’s also the start of a new week, wine-wise.  I don’t have much on tap as far as big tastings go, but that doesn’t mean that I won’t be trying some amazing things this week.  A lot of times I find new favourites when a rep simply does a drop-by, or I get last minute word of a tasting going on just around the corner.

Last week was one of those weeks.  On Tuesday, I happened to unexpectedly try two wines that blew me away.  They were at opposite ends of the wine spectrum, but both wines stopped me in my tracks as they were each stunning in their own unique way.

Quarisa Wines‘Johnny Q’ Semillon Chardonnay Brut Cuvee, Tharbogang, Australia, $14.99

Wow.  I’d never had Sparkling with so much Semillon in it before.  It retained a good amount of the waxy mouthfeel that Semillon is known for, almost as if all of those millions of bubbles were dipped in wax.  It was lush and foamy with great nutmeg and brioche on the nose, and then the palate just totally slathered some honey on that brioche with some hints of preserved lemon.  So much character, a great food wine, fantastic length and deee-licious.

Oh, and ninjas on the label?  Hell’s YEAH!

Ten minutes after trying this little number, I whipped around the corner to a Bouchard tasting at Boneta, where -for the first time ever – I got to try it:

Bouchard Pere & Fils Chevalier-Montrachet 2006, Puligny-Montrachet, France, $349.00

Boom!  Bracing, but elegant.  Lime, lemon and spiced orange with rounded honeyed edges.  White pepper and hints of cumin.  Great viscosity, bright, clean acidity, and length, and length, and length, and length.

A legendary wine from a legendary vineyard.  Each sip was more phenomenal than the last.  I don’t want to overstate this, but it really stirred the soul.  At the very least, DAMN that was some good juice!

But, you know, as the day went on, I kept thinking back to that cheap little Aussie bubble.  So good.  I thought about when and where I could grab a bottle to play around with it food-wise.

That’s when I realized that this is exactly what I love about wine.  When it comes right down to it, I enjoyed both wines equally, but for very different reasons.  Never mind that for the price of a bottle of one of them, I could get two cases of the other (though this is very relevant.).  I guess my point is that I’m simply glad that I’m not a wine snob.  It’ll be many years before I have the Montrachet again, and I’m certainly not gonna be the one forking over the dough for it.  But for tonight, I can have that $15 bottle of sparkling deliciousness and be just as happy.

On a Monday.

And that is excellent.